28 August 2017

Where was 'Ancient Greece'?

  • Ancient Greece incorporated much more territory than Modern Greece & Cyprus
  • Extent varied greatly over time

Modern Greece

Aegean Basin and Magna Graecia in c5-4 BC

Colonization, circa 800-500 BC

Alexander's Empire at his death, 323 BC

Hellenistic Kingdom of Bactria circa 180 BC

Indo-Greek Kingdoms at maximum extent under Menander I, circa 150-130 BC (kingdoms finally ended in 10 BC)

Climate and Landscape

  • Hellas is over 80% mountains

  • Frequent earthquakes

  • Mt. Olympos, 2972m (9750')

  • Thera/Santorini Volcano (circa 1650-1500 BC)

  • Few, large plains (Thessaly, Boetia, Attica)

  • Few passes, overland travel extremely difficult before c19

  • severe winters in mountains, hot dry summers on coast

Tectonic activity of the Mediterranean basin

Regions which can support olive trees, principally limited by elevation.

Ancient ways of thinking about space

  • Pausanias (fl. c.150 AD)
  • Descriptions of Greece, basically Roman province of Achaia
  • Focus on religious sites, Archaic and Classical monuments
  • Formated as tour of cities and rural sanctuaries, little interest for countryside
  • Accuracy confirmed through excavations

Geographers

  • Eratosthenes (c.285-194 BC)
  • Polymath, wrote literary criticism, chronology, mathematical treatises, philosophy and poetry
  • Calculated circumference of earth, accurate to about 10% of modern calculations

  • Ptolmey, Geography
  • Codex Vaticanus Urbinas Graecus 82, Constantinople circa 1300

  • Peutinger Map
  • 0.34 x 6.75 m (1'1" x 22'2")
  • c13 copy of c4/5(?) copy of (?) Augustan (27 BC - 14 AD)
  • Crimea, Thrace, Bythinia, Crete, Cyrene, and Egypt